France’s freshly appointed chief of defense said on Wednesday that he has instructed the nation’s armed forces to be ready for a “shock” in “three, four years” from Russia.
Gen. Fabien Mandon, who heads the General Staff of the armed forces, told lawmakers on the National Assembly’s defense committee that the shock “would be a form of test.”
“Perhaps the test already exists in hybrid forms, but it may become more violent,” he clarified in remarks carried by Le Figaro.
Earlier this month, it was reported that NATO was considering an armed response to Moscow’s hybrid attacks after alarm was sparked by a spate of recent airspace violations by drones and planes linked to Russia.
“Russia is a country that could be tempted to continue the war on our continent, and this is the decisive element in what I am preparing,” said Mandon, who took on the top military job at the start of September.
Mandon joins a growing chorus of senior NATO and EU figures who have warned that Russia is preparing to attack the alliance in the coming years. In 2024, German intelligence chiefs said that Moscow would be capable of launching an attack on NATO by 2030.
Last Wednesday, Politico reported that it had seen a draft military plan known as The Defense Readiness Roadmap 2030, which was presented to the European Commission and said that EU countries have five years to prepare for war.
“A militarized Russia poses a persistent threat to European security for the foreseeable future,” the document was reported to have read.
Mandon said that Moscow has the “perception of a collectively weak Europe” which has led to a “disinhibition of the use of force” on the Russian side.
“To assume that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine is the final attack and that it will not happen again on our continent is to ignore the risk facing our societies,” the general warned. “The Russians are reorganizing with one goal in mind: to confront NATO.”
Despite this, Mandon said, “Europe is the right scale to address our challenges,” theorizing that France’s rearmament push will act as a barrier to the Kremlin.
“Russia cannot frighten us if we are determined to defend ourselves,” he finished.